There is not enough time to do all the nothing we want to do.
Bill Watterson

Butterfly in the Capeweed

I don’t know about the years getting shorter as I get older, but Spring certainly seems to be in a hurry these days. Those all-too-brief weeks as the Earth wakes, dons her best dress, dabs a little perfume and goes a’courting seem to flicker past. Our long, searing hot Summer often arrives long before the calendar announces it’s official start. Today the dry northerly winds which herald the turning Season arrived, sucking the life out of tender seedlings. It brought the first firebans, the first sunburn and the realisation that I had run out of planting time much earlier this year ..

This is one for the “You know you are addicted when ..” file. Today I went to one of my favourite plant nurseries to while away my lunch-break. Ostensibly I wanted to purchase advanced tomato seedlings in the vain hope of fruit before Xmas .. but who am I kidding? As I perused the tomatoes, earnestly comparing the relative merits of amish paste, roma and oxheart, my eyes darted furtively to the perennials, hoping for a glimpse, straining for an elusive perfume, any excuse to “just have a quick look”. What is the first stage of addiction? Oh yes; denial.

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes and ships and sealing-wax
Of cabbages and kings
And why the sea is boiling hot
And whether pigs have wings ..”

— Lewis Carroll

I am not normally a diarist, nor do I think myself particularly profound. I do not understand most of what my Beloved does, indeed I often understand little of what he says. I mean it sounds like English (mostly). The mysteries of his electronic world where triumph and tragedy are dictated with a keystroke remain just that .. mysteries.

Look!! I even baked us some biscuits ..

I do understand however, that the knowledge I have gained in my rather more organic pursuits can be shared. Here I can reveal the secrets of Gran’s Melon Jam, the liniment I use when I really should not have kept working, the “But-I-Don’t-Eat-Cheesecake” cheesecake created for Beloved, or the construction techniques used in a ninth century Rus cavalry coat. I don’t need to go looking for a pen (they do have legs and run away, you know) or an old envelope, and the photos are likely to be much clearer than my sketches.

I should warn you that I am not a great photographer.. these are all my shots; au naturel and virgo intacta (as it were). They are untouched (except for cropping), un-airbrushed, colour enhanced or any of the other food-stylist tricksy things to make them look glamorous. I am sure Eldest Daughter will help me with the technical stuff.. The site is also a work in progress, so expect fonts, styles and layout to change without notice. With luck it will be my Beloved tinkering rather than me 😉

So I bid you welcome to my garden, my kitchen and my workshop. Take a load off, sip some tea and have a look around as I try to bring order to chaos in my corner of the cosmos.

Welcome

This blog started its life as a chunk of data for my Beloved to work the arcane magic he calls “Web Development”. Through several incarnations (and many, many re-edits), my ramblings about food, plants, herb-lore and stuff have sort of .. grown. So I bid you welcome to my garden, my kitchen and my workshop. Take a load off, sip some tea and bide a while.